AMSTERDAM - An increasing number of Dutch websites were made difficult or impossible to reach on Thursday evening. The internet disruption has affected at least three top banks in the country, with problems also reported with the Dutch Police website, transaction services Tikkie and iDeal, and real estate listing Funda.

The issue is believed to be connected to a malfunction at Massachusetts-based company Akamai. A status page from the company said that its domain name system was experiencing problems. "We are aware of an emerging issue with the Edge DNS service," the company said. "We are actively investigating the issue."

An increase in complaints could be seen on AlleStoringen starting just after 5 p.m. The site is the Dutch version of Down Detector, a company which tracks the availability of many online services. Akamai said it would provide an update by 7 p.m.

In the Netherlands, the websites of popular news outlets AD and Nu.nl were also difficult to reach. It was also hard to access international services, like TikTok, PlayStation Network, Steam, and Airbnb may also have been affected.

Significant problems were reported in the United States, including with connections to the 911 emergency services phone lines on the East Coast. Companies that were hit include FedEx, UPS, and several airlines, according to Down Detector. There were also problems reported in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Some estimates have suggested that tens of thousands of websites could be disrupted because of the issue.